Expulsions

Two 17-year-old boys were arrested and expelled from a Mission Viejo high school Monday after sheriff's deputies discovered one of them had brought an unloaded handgun onto campus and passed it to his friend, the school's principal said. Sheriff's deputies received an anonymous call about noon saying that a Laguna Hills boy had brought the gun to Silverado High, a continuation school that can hold as many as 350 students. When authorities questioned the teen, he said he was carrying the .

Two Los Angeles County supervisors today will call for an investigation into allegations that county lawyers withheld information about lawsuit expenses and ignored measures that could have saved taxpayers millions of dollars. The man formerly in charge of tamping down county lawsuits made the claims in a recent letter after being fired by top county attorney Ray Fortner earlier this month. The confidential letter from former litigation cost manager Robert E.

Chevron Corp. said Tuesday that it was told by Chad to leave the oil-rich African country over a tax dispute. The San Ramon, Calif.-based company received the demand in a letter Monday as part of a dispute in which Chad President Idriss Deby told Chevron and Malaysia-based Petronas last weekend that they owed $450 million in taxes. Chevron asserts that it is "in full compliance with all our tax obligations," spokesman Donald Campbell said Tuesday. Campbell declined to comment further.

The government expelled an Indian diplomat it said it had caught with sensitive documents, and India responded by ordering out a Pakistani diplomat, in a setback to the nuclear-armed rivals' shaky peace process. Pakistan and India often have expelled each other's diplomats over spying allegations. But Saturday's expulsions were the first since the two countries agreed in January 2004 to resume peace talks, the Indian statement said.

A day after the release of a memo attributed to Al Qaeda in Iraq that described plans for a violent campaign to displace Shiite Muslims from many parts of the country, one of the sect's most influential religious leaders used his Friday sermon to urge the faithful to hold their ground. "I demand first the government and second the brothers to keep their places," said Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, leader of the capital's largest and most influential Shiite house of worship, the Bratha Mosque.

A Costa Mesa middle school student could be expelled and is being investigated by police for threatening to kill a classmate in a posting on a popular website, officials said Thursday. "Going into a situation like this, we are concerned about the safety of all of our kids," said Bob Metz, Newport-Mesa Unified School District's assistant superintendent of secondary education. "We need to make sure we take the proper action to make sure our kids are safe."

Mexico City authorities Wednesday lifted a closure order on a Sheraton hotel, a day after they demanded that it be shut amid a dispute over the U.S.-ordered expulsion of a group of Cubans meeting there. "We are confident that in these few hours the hotel has rectified practically all the irregularities," city official Virginia Jaramillo told reporters after hotel managers met with government officials and the local American Chamber of Commerce.

The parents of a Thousand Oaks middle school student lost their bid Friday to purge their son's academic record of an expulsion he received last fall for inadvertently bringing a knife to school. Jorge and Rose Bautista asked the Ventura County Board of Education to expunge the black mark, arguing that their son Daniel's punishment was too severe.

President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that Venezuela was expelling a U.S. Navy officer accused of passing secret information from the Venezuelan military to the Pentagon. He also accused Navy Cmdr. John Correa of encouraging Venezuelan officers to consider overthrowing the government, which weathered a brief coup in April 2002. Chavez warned that he would throw out all U.S. military attaches if further suspected espionage occurred. The U.S.

A tough new chief judge imposed order Sunday on Saddam Hussein's chaotic trial, ousting a co-defendant and a defense attorney from the courtroom and provoking a walkout by the rest of the defense team. Shouting "Shame on you!" the deposed Iraqi leader then refused court-appointed counsel and was escorted out, followed by two more co-defendants who joined him in protest.